Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday July 04, 2009 @02:22PM
from the where-are-the-battery-swap-out-centers dept.

Slatterz writes "The Tesla Roadster has almost mythical status among electric car enthusiasts. It's fast, with high torque over a wide RPM range, and can beat a Ferrari in terms of acceleration. Now Tesla has released new video of its upcoming new electric car, called the Model S, which Tesla Motors claims is the world's first mass produced fully-electric vehicle. Unlike the Lotus-Elise based Roadster, the Model S is a traditional sedan of the type millions of commuters might actually drive. Tesla claims it will fit seven people (if two of them are 'children under 10'), and has mounted a rather large 17in LCD in the dash. Key to Telsa's future will be the evolution of lithium-ion battery technology. Tesla Motors claiming the new Model S can travel up to 300 miles on a single charge, but the battery will still take 45 minutes to quick-recharge." (And for those in countries where it matters, this article mentions that it should also be available in right-hand drive.)

At $50,000 do they think it is too expensive to call it the model T? Do they think calling it the model T would be too arrogant? Maybe the next one will be cheaper and then they will go ahead and give it the next name. After all we would all like to see the model T version of the electric car that will get us off of expensive oil.

"After all we would all like to see the model T version of the electric car that will get us off of expensive oil."

For that to happen, early adopters must drop the cash on much more expensive vehicles, just as they did before Henry Ford produced the Model T. Early adopters will be more likely to forgive faults that buyers of an econobox would not.

At fifty grand for a beta version, I'll be better off letting the rich folks purchase those.

Early adopters make economies of scale a realize goal. People who bought the roadster showed that there was continuing interest in a cheaper, more massly produced vehicle. People who buy the model S will do the same. Tesla does want to create a car that they can sell for $20k to $30k. If you have the money why not become an early adopter? Right here is hopefully the future of the automobile industry.

GM didn't even sell the car. They had a lease-only program throughout which you could never actually buy the car. They put marginal marketing into it and despite a practical cult-like following of its users who loved the car (i.e. the Apple effect), they forced all of them to be returned. They then crushed every single car save for a few saved for educational purposes (universities, mu

A small cult of enthusiasts doesn't support a full-scale manufacturing run. And please quit the conspiracy theories about how 'big oil' or whoever killed the electric car. If they were viable, Japan and Europe would be firing them out no matter what the US government did.

More importantly, remember to keep the price of gasoline in perspective. Over 100,000km, you'll pay about 5500 dollars in gasoline or diesel at $1/l(about 3.80/galllon), or 11000 dollars at $2/l(about 7.60/gallon). Considering just how far 100,000km is, that's a pittiance.

For some more perspective, I usually travel around 700km/week, which was costing around $120 in fuel. In the newer car the cost is around $60/week. Or $520/month vs $260/month.

$50.000 ~ 35.000 euros
Tesla model S looks like a luxury sedan. The same money would buy you a low end Mercedes or BMW in Europe, but with nowhere near the performance of 0-60mph in 5 seconds. For that kind of performance you would probably have to go with a turbo-charged compact, but the fuel economy is gone and you won't have the same interior space. If the numbers they advertise are true, it's quite a cheap car to buy, all things considered.

Wow, you get it. The people that think the sedan model is expensive aren't the market for a 5-series or M-class car from BMW either. And those who call the Aptera expensive at $25k-$30k probably wouldn't have chosen the GTI that I did either. But when I or any other consumer am already willing to spend that amount, and one considers the Free Fuel (at a penny a mile, close enough) and the money you don't have to spend on oil ($10/quart or so for Syntec) and the absence of those damn O2 sensors that fail... I look forward to the day Tesla purchases GM as a proper memorial to the EV1.

That prompted me to run the numbers. I drive about 11K miles per year commuting and get around 23 mpg (lead foot). 11K miles/23 mpg = 479 gallons. Gas is already $3.20 a gallon again here so let's call it $3 average to account for the "penny a mile". $3/gallon * 479 gallons/year = $1,437/year. I keep cars for ten years so that's $14,370 over the life of the car, and that's if gas doesn't go any higher (yeah, right).

Adding in four oil changes a year at $40/each and that's $160/yr or $1600 lifetime.

I assume it would be charged overnight at my house. In the six years I've had my current car I've driven it further than 200 miles from my house exactly once. I don't even get to 100 miles in a day really.

For electricity, I am looking at installing solar as I live in Southern California and it's break even in about eight years. Add this in and it's a no-brainer.

As far as maintenance issues, I didn't calculate any major maintenance costs for either this or internal combustion as I specifically state

If you plan on driving your truck for 300k miles@ 20 MPG, then that's 15,000 gallons of fuel - which is pretty good for a "truck". You are really paying less than $2 per gallon? Gas seems to average around $2.75 and to be fair, it will probably only increase in price. So I'll call it an even $3/gallon, which will make fuel coasts around $45,000 for 300K if you were to buy your truck now. Unless your truck is a diesel, then some major engine repair/ maintenance costs would be probably fair to also add i

Can you guys quit the high-fiving and general atmosphere of butt-massage therapy so we can get back to businness and have a decent f*cking flamewar? What the hell are you people doing on slashdot? Were you not told it was mean to ruin the fun for everyone else? Jesus H Christ in a Tesla. We're trrying to have a having automobile piss contest here. WTF?

They aren't an established company like GM or Ford, it makes sense for them to start out with high-end customized vehicles, grow large on that, and then slowly descend into the mass market as economies of scale start to kick in. There's no other good business model that does not require eight digits of initial capital.

It's important to note where the cash burn came from. Initially Tesla was looking at a car that'd only cost $60k to build; they discovered, through an audit partway through development, that it actually cost over $120k to build. They jacked up the price to $109k and have been optimizing it for a while, and finally have it down to where they make about $10k per Roadster -- not a lot for a car that expensive, but not pocket change either. At the same time, as a company, they're still losing money, as they're pumping a lot into Model S development. But they got the loan because they met the DOE's requirement to have a profitable core business (in this case, the Roadster).

I suppose next you'll come up with some crazy talk about getting rid of tax deductions for buying gigantic houses.

Actually, it's the tax break for borrowing money to buy a house that we're really talking about here. And yes, it bugs the hell out of me. Local jurisdictions might want to provide some sort of financial incentive for people to buy property in their area (and some do - with the provision that the buyer occupy the house personall for some period of time), but forcing a taxpayer renting an apartment in Wyoming to help a guy in New Jersey buy a house is... wrong.

A relative of mine puts 100,0000 miles on a car in a year. That's a lot of fuel.

And it's still going to be a lot of fuel, burned somewhere else to make this car's electricity. We need nukes, since the wind and solar things will never put a dent in a massive shift to cars like this.

It's great to see an electric car this cool for so cheap. I mean, $50k isn't cheap, but it's cheap in comparison to their other car, an it seems generally more practical. If I were going to buy a car, I might consider this, but I might very well decide that $50k is just too much.

I'm wondering, though, does anyone know what kind of profit margin Tesla is getting on these? Is the government subsidizing these at all (for environmental reasons)? Are they in the sort of situation where, as they start selling, Tesla will enjoy economy of scale and prices will go down substantially? Or is this price pretty firm?

If I were going to buy a car, I might consider this, but I might very well decide that $50k is just too much.

Don't forget that the initial price isn't the total cost of ownership. The site doesn't say what the battery capacity is or the charging efficiency, which means that we can't tell how much it costs to drive for a mile. It has fewer moving parts than a typical ICE vehicle, so maintenance costs are probably lower, with the exception of the cost of replacing the battery every few years (I think they are rated for 70% capacity after 5 years, so you probably want to replace at least every 6-8 years).

True, but at this point, there's just no way of knowing how the TCO compares with a conventional car. As you said, there might be lower maintenance costs in general. On the other hand, with a new product that includes a new design, it takes a few years to know how well that design holds up under real use. Battery replacement costs are sure to be expensive, but you'll probably save some money on fuel costs on a day-to-day level. And how will it keep its value if you decide to resell it? It's hard to say

That's based on an absurdly low price of electricity, though. My current PG&E top tier rate (and every kWh I add is billed at this rate) is $0.33/kWh, for a total of over $23 per recharge. If the new Honda Fit hybrid really comes out to 45 MPG highway, it will cost less (@$3 per gallon) than this Tesla car to operate and will cost over $40,000 less to buy the car.

Put another way, assuming a 200,000 mile lifespan of both vehicles, gas would have to average a whopping $12.47 per gallon without electrici

My point is that this thing has way, way too much acceleration and that as a result, there are gasoline cars that come close to it in terms of ongoing operating costs. The whole point of going electric is to lower your costs,

Stop. Right. There.

This car has superior performance to any other car in its class, period.

and if it isn't doing that, why not buy a luxury gas-powered car? Give me 0-60 in 7-8 seconds and that's plenty.

Says you.

The performance level of this vehicle is important to get the early adopters necessary to make it credible. It's also necessary to justify the price on an unproven technology (electric cars are known to work, but this package is so far untested.)

The NEXT vehicle is intended to be a basic sedan with ordinary performance and much more range. This has always been part of the Tesla Motors game plan, so if you are

I don't know the economics of these for the average person, but right now America is consuming a big chunk of the energy the world produces and is way far ahead per capita than most other countries, even other 1st world countries with similiar standards of living (maybe except Canada), something like Germany. Some of it due to our car oriented culture (which no product will fix, but an infrastructure issue - go by a European high school vs American suburban high school and check out ratio of cars to bicycl

I used an electric bike a couple years ago that wasn't high tech in any sense of the word. The batteries were basically UPS batteries in expensive casings. Besides that, the electric parts were basically grafted onto a conventional bike chassis. It reached residental street speeds and did so for distances far longer than I could pedal. The bike cost about $500 CDN.

I think we're trying to solve the wrong problem. We're trying to reinvent the car as a car, when we need to re-invent our concept of a vehicle altogether.

I imagine a good electric vehicle being had for less than 2000 dollars, and being a 3-wheel, 2 seater with a lightweight basket capable of carrying a couple bags of groceries. It would have to be weather-proof, but that could (and should) be accomplished using something cheap and effective like tarp and plexi-glass and aluminium. It'd have a small enough footprint to use bike paths and to store like a bicycle, a long enough distance to use as a commuter(at least 100km on a charge), high enough speeds to use residental streets, and low enough cost that people like me don't need to point out it's uneconomical to own. Such a vehicle would require a fraction of the energy to move, it would require a fraction of the materials to build, and overall could actually be a practical solution that doesn't need a technological deus ex machina to happen.

The tesla motors paradigm is still too inside the box. They're trying to make an electric car in a world where electric cars aren't useful. We need to think outside the box, to what we actually want, so we can escape the limitations of the automobile.

How do you plan to build a three-wheeled vehicle narrow enough to used bike paths and store like a bicycle? Obviously the seating arrangement can't be side-by-side... but I think once you want a third wheel, second seat, and shelter from the elements you're talking about a vehicle that's just too wide and cumbersome to steer to go on a bike path. Bike paths are bad enough when used by the very narrow and nimble vehicles they're intended for; these would be worse than rollerbladers and recomb bikers put to

It's not for me. 4 hours is nothing in the midwest. I currently live 5 hours from my parents house. When we drove to NYC last year it took 12. 15-20 minutes max for a break, otherwise your journey takes for ever.

I'll stick to my Diesel Jetta which can run on Diesel, Biodiesel created from waste oil, crushed soybeans, algae, liquefied natural gas (GTL), or liquefied coal gas (GTL), any one of a number of renewable resources. If I stretch it I can get 800 to a TANK and still refill in 5-10 minutes.

It's not for me. 4 hours is nothing in the midwest. I currently live 5 hours from my parents house. When we drove to NYC last year it took 12. 15-20 minutes max for a break, otherwise your journey takes for ever.

Still, that's not too typical for most people's day-to-day routine. And like the previous poster said, I would expect that most people can live with a 45 minute break every 4 hours on long car trips. You stretch your legs and maybe get something to eat, and then you're ready to go.

Actually, the funny thing in my mind is that, given your examples, I would probably be much more frustrated with the 5 hour trip than the 12 hour trip. If you're already taking a 12 hour trip, adding an extra hour or two of rest time doesn't seem that extreme to me. Hell, you might even think of it as a safety feature to help prevent road-hypnosis.

But imagine your battery lasts for 300 miles and you regularly make a trip that's 320 miles long. To have to stop 20 miles short of your destination and recharge for 45 minutes then would be pretty annoying. On the other hand, I would suppose you could just charge for 10 minutes and keep going. If it's like most batteries, it recharges most of the way pretty quickly, and then takes a long time to get that last 10% of charge.

What people don't get is that the point of liquid gasoline or CNG or LNG or whatever is that it takes 5 minutes at most to fill up and off you go. That and range are the two criteria that make electric cars unacceptable to Joe Sixpack at the moment. If you can make an electric car that gets 300 miles per charge and charges up in 5 minutes, then you've got a competitor (except for the problem of not being able to hitchhike down the road to bring back a can of gas in an emergency). Until you bring those two p

The thing is, unless they're rich, people don't buy a car based on their day-to-day routine. They buy a car based on how well it can handle all their driving needs. If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving, they're not going to buy a second car just for that one trip. They're going to eliminate the electric from consideration and buy one car that can handle both needs.

I've proposed that people rent a car for their once-a-year trips, and the common reply is that it'd be a "waste of money" when you "already own a car." Not to mention rental cars would be in short supply with jacked up prices around holidays like Thanksgiving. The fiscal benefit of an electric car for day-to-day travel would have to outweigh the cost of renting for that once-a-year trip. A decent rail system would also fill this need for intermediate trip lengths, but alas the U.S. has sacrificed its rail system for freeways. Plug-in hybrids are also a good solution, since they can fill up at a gas station if need be. But then you're carrying around all that weight of an ICU which is only used a few times a year.

If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving, they're not going to buy a second car just for that one trip.

But:

They might decide to fly or take a train.

They could rent a car for that once-a-year trip.

It can handle a 12 hour trip. You'll just have to take a few 45 minute breaks along the way.

If you're really that strapped for cash, you're not going to spend $50k on a car anyway.

People's needs are really more fluid than they like to admit. I don't think a 45 minute break every 4 hours is going to be a deal breaker for most people. If it is, it might be more psychological than based on real need. Ther

Exactly! Earlier this year, I needed a cargo van to move a furnace up from Missouri. So I rented one. I need a cargo van about once every year. Does that mean I should buy a cargo van, make it my daily commuter? Nobody would ever suggest that. But then they apply that exact same logic to EVs.

Personally, in terms of range extension, I'm fond of towable generators. Range-extended when you need it, and not when you don't. And it'd be so trivial to set up a genset rental shop once such vehicles are on t

First, it wouldn't turn your 8 hour trip into an 11 hour trip. If the Tesla car only needs to be charged every 4 hours, then you only have to stop once to recharge to go 8 hours. So that's 8:45. Plus, there's a good chance your 8-hour trip already includes one stop or more for gas, a couple bathroom breaks, and a stop for a snack, so you extend any one of those stops by a few minutes and charge your car a little more, and you're not necessarily losing much time at all.

Let's assume they're talking about the same pack as in the Roadster (even though the pack you get for $57.4K is lesser capacity). That means you're putting in 45kWh in 10 minutes. That's a charge rate of more than 270kW. That will require 440V power (3-phase) at 600A! And that's assuming 100% efficiency!

There's going to be a lot of places where you can't get that much power. And even if you can, the amount of waste heat giving off by the charger, and in the pack will be very difficult to manage. Also, the charging cable would be a bit of a hassle to wrestle because it's going to be very thick.

I'd be surprised if they even let electric cars drive into a gas station, let alone let them fill up... the risk of sparks leading to fire/explosion is way too great. These will have to be purpose built electric stations.

At a 45 minute fill up time they'll have to be *big* to accomodate all the waiting cars, too.. and provide refereshments/food.

The battery pack you get for $57.4K (the cheapest model) is a 160 mile pack, not a 300 mile pack.

And you aren't going to be able to fully charge it in 45 minutes. LIons just won't stand for it. You should be able to put 85% of the charge in in 45 minutes, but since it such rapid charging reduces the lifespan of the battery, Tesla doesn't recommend you charge it in 45 minutes (at least they don't recommend it for the Roadster, this has a similar pack so I presume this is the same).

Acceptable range is kind of a tricky idea, if you had a charger everywhere, then this might be okay. But instead, you are likely to drive to your range and find there is no place to charge it at your stopover or destination.

Here's an example of how the difficulties in recharging an electric car makes it less useful than a gas car.

People are ready to make all kinds of excuses as to why short range cars are okay. Many of them are even accurate. The problem is that consumers don't seem to agree with the arguments. People are using to paying a little and getting more car than they need. Getting them to warm up to the idea of paying a lot and getting less car than they need is going to take a lot f convincing.

In the mean time, turns out 300 miles is not sufficient range, which i

It's just under 300 miles from Banning, CA, to Phoenix, AZ. Wonder what the mileage would be for that drive leaving Banning around 10 am the first week of September and using the air-conditioner. Probably wouldn't get to Blyth which is about half way. The electric and hybrid car ads and news stories never talk about the added burden of the air-conditioner and its power requirements.

And for those in countries where it matters, this article mentions that it should also be available in right-hand drive.

Where it matters? Do some countries have laws dictating that sort of thing? AFAIK, that sort of thing of more de facto than de jure. I, personally, would love to have a right-hand drive car here in the US. Because otherwise when you park on the street the most-used seat/door is exposed to traffic.

It Britain you can drive a left hand drive car, but it is probably going to be more expensive to insure it. Insurance companies ask if it is a right hand drive car. I'm not sure what happens if you say it isn't.

You can drive it as an import but can't register it in the UK, so it'll have foreign plates. Insurance would be insane on something like a Tesla, given that there are approximately zero garages that know how to fix them and no parts availablility, plus with that 0-60 it's going to be classed as sports.

Cars around most (though not all) of the world are specificlaly designed so that the driver is as close to the middle of the road as possible. This is a safety feature; it makes it easier to control where you are relative to oncoming traffic. After a few years of driving you probably don't even notice anymore (I don't) but new drivers have a real tendency to try and put themselves toward the middle of the lane. On a left-hand drive (in the US) this means they end up taking a bit of the shoulder, or lane goi

Summary says it takes 45 minutes for a quick charge while the article states: "Batteries that last for 289,000 km have been demonstrated, as well as the ability to 'quick charge' batteries to 80% in less than 10 minutes. " Perhaps it's 45 minutes for a full charge?

Another interesting point: My current vehicle can travel almost double that distance on a tank of gasoline, and takes seconds to refill. This is important because it's almost 500 miles to the next city from where I live -- I can travel to the next city with one tank of gas, but I'd need to refill the battery 3 times to comfortably make it by electric car, since I'm not going to let my batteries run to 0%.

Will the 8 hour drive to the next town become a multiple day journey? Will I need to start planning to visit hotels where now I can just ignore the towns? Will we see a re-emergence of small refueling towns, as we saw in the age of coal-based rail, thanks to the significantly reduced range of our vehicles?

Or, much more logically, will we see people using their electric cars for the daily everyday travel and simply use other options for long-range travel? I don't get the emphasis people are placing on these over 200 miles trips. How often do you drive that much? If the answer is 2 or 3 times a year, then the electric car should suit you just fine the vast majority of the time. If the answer is, "very often" then the electric car isn't for you, but it still is perfect for 99.5% of the driving population. It's not like gas cars are going to disappear overnight because kickass electric cars are finally here.

That's not how people weigh choices. They will wonder "Will I ever need to travel more than 200 miles? Yes? Ok, that rules out the Tesla."

That would basically be my thought process. Unless there is some huge benefit to driving a Tesla, it would simply not even be worth considering; if I bought one, I would then have to turn around and buy a second 'real' car.

That's not how people weigh choices. They will wonder "Will I ever need to travel more than 200 miles? Yes? Ok, that rules out the Tesla."
That would basically be my thought process. Unless there is some huge benefit to driving a Tesla, it would simply not even be worth considering; if I bought one, I would then have to turn around and buy a second 'real' car.

It's your money, and you can use whatever thought process you want as to how to spend it, but that doesn't make it logical. If you only need to make a few over 200 mile trips a year, the money you'll save on gas will pay for the car rental. So the only thing that makes sense to ask is, "is this a better car for the majority of my driving needs and is there an alternative I can easily take for those exceptions where this car just isn't suitable?"

For me, the answer is yes on both counts. The only thing preventing me from buying the car is that I'm not in the market for a new car, much less a $50,000 one. The range isn't an issue at all.

You and a lot of slashdot, maybe. But rule #1 about marketing is that most people don't behave rationally, particularly with something like a car. Just look at SUV's. Most people that buy (bought?) them are actually experiencing a downgrade in functionality and an increase in price, but they do it anyway. People often buy cars that perform poorly or are functionally crippled for what they need just because of some strange perception of what the car *represents*.

so if you drive a car for 5 hours at 30KW then want to recharge it in 10 minutes that means you need 900KW of power. it also means the wires in the car need to be able to handle 30 times the typical driving load.

if the connector was a 208V connector then that's about 4000 DC amps for ten minutes.

At the cost of electricity in California, that is about $22.50 worth of electricity. Depending on the size of your tank, a typical fillup for a midsize sedan is about $40 and will get you about 25% further. So in reality we are looking at about $30 for a gas car to go the same distance. Still a pretty good savings, until everyone has one of these and the cost of electricity doubles. Too bad the greens don't want us building any more power plants.

Instead of wasting energy making it accelerate unnecessarily quickly, how about giving it a usefully long range

Why would you assume they can trade battery life for low end torque? One property of electrical engines is they allow for faster acceleration on the low end. It's not like they can somehow get rid of this acceleration while still having an electrical motor with the same top speed and I don't see how they can get more battery life out of the same either.

It's about the torque. Those electric motors have full torque when they start moving, unlike the internal combustion types that need to spin up to a certain RPM to maximize torque. The transmission tries to even this out, but with an electric, you just have more acceleration from a stop by the nature of the design. I'm more interested in how fast they can go from 60-100 mph, like when you need to pass someone. In theory it would be similar, but not better.

> Instead of wasting energy making it accelerate unnecessarily quickly, how about giving> it a usefully long range?

This is electric, not gas. That isn't a tradeoff. Any electric motor capable of acceptable performance at highway speeds will accelerate very well: it's the way electric motors are. If you put in a feeble motor barely able to go 65mph on the level you would only gain a little range, and nobody would buy it. And it could still lay rubber.

There is a bigger issue with regards to the batteries... where do we get all of the lithium for them?

While it's certainly a noble effort to try to reduce/end our dependency on foreign oil, few realize that the major supplies of lithium are outside of the USA... effectively meaning we replace one addiction/dependency for another.

True, but lithium from old batteries is more recyclable than the CO2 that comes out of a normal tail pipe. The supply/recycling thing might work even better if instead of relying primarily on recharging, a network of battery swapping stations is built up, where you'd lease the battery, and the manufacturer would necessarily get it back at the end of life for refurbishment.
That said, I still think the future is synthetic gasoline that runs in a normal engine. Less of a pain in the rear to implement and no

Imported oil is consumed by driving... maybe at an average rate on about one tank full of gasoline per week.

Imported lithium for replacement electric batteries will be consumed at maybe an average rate of one battery pack replacement per 10 years, with probably some recycling ability of the lithium from a used battery pack.

I think we are talking about drastically different scales of foreign import dependence.

Lithium scarcity is one of those myths that just won't die. It's based on a few misguided notions: 1) that lithium makes up most of a lithium-ion battery (it doesn't); 2) it's its most expensive element in a lithium-ion battery (it isn't); and 3) a gross misunderstanding of how reserve figures work.

In reference to the latter case, everyone needs to get in their heads that reserve figures are based on A) what's been found, at B) the current price, and C) current technology. In reference to lithium, A) people haven't really been looking for it because it's so cheap; B) it's dirt cheap; and C) the tech to produce it cheaper hasn't really been needed so it hasn't been worked on.

Even with current tech, a figure of li-ion EVs could easily be sustained through seawater extraction indefinitely. Isn't that the beginning and end of the issue right there?

$49K USD? Is that in 2009 dollars, or 2011 dollars?:-) If there is a massive period of dollar hyper-inflation in the next year, I think Tesla can stand to make a lot of money on promises no one can afford to keep.

Oh, well. The Maserati Quattroporte is available today, and the 5l, V-12 Aston Martin Rapide will be out momentarily. Along with Jaguar's recent XF and 2010 redesign for the XJ, these seem to be the flag-carriers that Tesla seems to be following in th

I wonder how much extra it will cost to have the blue LEDs stripped off the outside, the blue lights removed from the inside and replaced with dull red (because I like to be able to see at night), and the 17" touchscreen ripped out and replaced with knobs and dials you can operate by feel rather than sight (because looking at the road is good)?

$49K USD? Is that in 2009 dollars, or 2011 dollars?:-) If there is a massive period of dollar hyper-inflation in the next year, I think Tesla can stand to make a lot of money on promises no one can afford to keep.

Fictional dollars. The price of the roadster went up significantly between pre-order and release; no reason the S will be any different. And as with the Roadster, I think we'll see the specs change for the worse as well. (45-minute charge? As has been pointed out, the math doesn't add up, and

So the Tesla Roadster actually has better acceleration than the Rapide, and considering Wikipedia quotes the Rapide at $240k USD compared to the $110~120k USD for the 2009 Roadster, I'd say the roadster wins on bang for buck there. The Model S in tfa is set to cost ~$49k USD and is still one helluva luxury car. And more than just the initial price, the Model S (supposedly according to Tesla marketing anyway) will cost only $4 dollars to fully recharge from empty.

I could probably rant all day, but the point is, the offerings from Tesla Motors puts an electric car with performance as high as the gas equivalent in the price range of mere mortals and doesn't require you to be an Apple stock millionaire or sell your ocean front property just to buy the damned car...

I believe the two child seats fold out into the trunk area...the rear-facing kids' bench used to be common on station wagons, but it is quite unusual for a large sedan. Interior pictures would be nice.

Troll, that's a loan. Loans typically have to get paid back with interest.Also, according to wolfram alpha, there are approximately 115.2M people employed in the United States. The loan was for $465M. This averages out to $4.04 per taxpayer. Not a whole lot to take off now is it?

I don't know, the aptera seats 2 (3 if one is an infant), goes 120miles on a charge and runs 30k for the electric model. The model S seats 5 (7 if you put two dead 10 year olds in the trunk), has a 300 mile range, and runs $60k. If you had to take 4 people on trips regularly, the model S is a better deal. It's also more likely to be accepted at you local country club, where people tend to have 30k+ to drop on a second car.

The Volt is dead on arrival, imho, as a real "alternative" vehicle. 40 miles on a cha

More accurately, it's 5+2 seating -- two mini rear-facing seats in the back. Not many believe those will actually make it to the production version, but it's another in a long line of pretty shrewd marketing efforts by Tesla to break all of the EV stereotypes one by one (they're slow, they can't go very far, they're small, etc). They're also shrewdly pushing its after-tax-credit price rather than its before-tax-credit price like many others are doing.